"Commentary from P.M. Carpenter"

November 12, 2012

Triumphalism kills

Politico's Jonathan Martin examines the "Fox News-talk radio-Drudge Report axis," which contributed on an extraordinary scale to the right's dashed but ludicrous hopes:

[T]he consumer is now entirely in charge of what he or she sees each day and can largely shut out dissenting voices. It’s the great irony of the Internet era: People have more access than ever to an array of viewpoints, but also the technological ability to screen out anything that doesn’t reinforce their views.

I think it's important to loop back just once more to this earlier warning about the potential of an MSNBC bubble, too, which, indeed, is less a potential than it is a recent material fact.

Remember the Scott Walker Recall Affair? Did you watch MSNBC's amped-up, pre-recall-election coverage? Do you recollect the nightly confidence of the Nation's John Nichols or Adam Green of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee or similar voices on the left? Gov. Walker was toast. Remember? Countless, reinforcing interviews by Schultz and Maddow and reels of B-roll of mountainously stacked signed petitions--yep, Walker's days were over. On MSNBC, any doubt of this looming reality ranged from little to none.

Until real reality hit on Recall Day, which is when MSNBC hosts belatedly discovered they'd been devoting too much time to left-wing journalist-activists who had spent all of their time talking to anti-Walker forces who were in turn being interviewed by overconfident MSNBC hosts, and so on. The votes were never there to oust Walker, and most of the polling had relentlessly confirmed that. Yet the left's hopes were high--unrealistically high--and that's why, post-recall, they very much resembled Dick Morris.

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Triumphalism kills

Politico's Jonathan Martin examines the "Fox News-talk radio-Drudge Report axis," which contributed on an extraordinary scale to the right's dashed but ludicrous hopes:

[T]he consumer is now entirely in charge of what he or she sees each day and can largely shut out dissenting voices. It’s the great irony of the Internet era: People have more access than ever to an array of viewpoints, but also the technological ability to screen out anything that doesn’t reinforce their views.

I think it's important to loop back just once more to this earlier warning about the potential of an MSNBC bubble, too, which, indeed, is less a potential than it is a recent material fact.

Remember the Scott Walker Recall Affair? Did you watch MSNBC's amped-up, pre-recall-election coverage? Do you recollect the nightly confidence of the Nation's John Nichols or Adam Green of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee or similar voices on the left? Gov. Walker was toast. Remember? Countless, reinforcing interviews by Schultz and Maddow and reels of B-roll of mountainously stacked signed petitions--yep, Walker's days were over. On MSNBC, any doubt of this looming reality ranged from little to none.

Until real reality hit on Recall Day, which is when MSNBC hosts belatedly discovered they'd been devoting too much time to left-wing journalist-activists who had spent all of their time talking to anti-Walker forces who were in turn being interviewed by overconfident MSNBC hosts, and so on. The votes were never there to oust Walker, and most of the polling had relentlessly confirmed that. Yet the left's hopes were high--unrealistically high--and that's why, post-recall, they very much resembled Dick Morris.